New Look At Snook As Sports Species

Sometime this summer, Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission biologists plan to put 30,000 finger-length fish into a lake in downtown Lakeland.

If the streamlined fingerlings adapt as readily as biologists expect, freshwater anglers in South Florida may soon be stalking one of the most prized saltwater game fish -- the snook.

GFC biologists are working with biologists of the Florida Department of Natural Resources in a cooperative effort to boost snook populations in saltwater locations and introduce them as a new sport species in some freshwater lakes.

At the same time, the game commission Biologists are hoping they'll have an improved method for eliminating pesky fish species such as the blue tilapia and threadfin shad.

Because snook grow much larger than the native largemouth bass, reaching weights in excess of 50 pounds, they should be able to consume more, and bigger, trash fish.

If the snook live up to their expectations, they'll be a double-edged sword, giving sport fishermen a worthy fight and curbing the exploding populations of pest species -- but on a limited scale.

The cold-sensitive snook probably can't survive in freshwater lakes north of Lake Okeechobee, the biologists say.

Although saltwater snook range as far north as Volusia County, they have access to the insulating blanket of deeper water that is not available in Florida's shallow freshwater lakes.

And the substropical snook becomes dangerously stressed when temperatures reach the mid-50s.

Such intolerance to cold would seem to make the Lakeland experiment doomed, but biologists say Lake Parker receives warm-water power plant discharges that should keep the lake's water within the fish's tolerance limits.

The snook will be from eggs hatched and raised in Texas under a cooperative agreement with that state's parks and wildlife department.

But soon, Florida biologists will be furnishing their own snook fingerling at a DNR's new $700,000 saltwater fish hatchery that is to begin operation in October. Within five years, biologists hope to be producing 5 million snook fingerling and 18 million red drum fingerling at the facility each year for stocking studies.

When they attain the 2-inch size, the fish will be shipped back to Florida and dumped into Lake Parker.

''Once you grow them up to an inch, the snook have absolutely no problem at all in fresh water,'' said Phil Chapman, the fisheries biologist overseeing the project for the game and fish commission.

Chapman and his staff will monitor the growth of the fish to see if enough grow large enough and fast enough to warrant stocking programs in other lakes. He estimates it will take them two or three years to reach the minimum size where they would benefit fishermen.

These freshwater snook will be governed by the same regulations that cover their saltwater cousins, Chapman said, meaning fishermen may keep only two fish per day. Both fish must be at least 24 inches long and only one may be 34 inches or longer.

Soon after that, he hopes, they'll start upstaging bass when it comes to ridding lakes of the pesky weed-eating tilapia that is crowding out many native fish.

''Bass are not very efficient predators where tilapia are concerned, because the tilapia outgrow the bass,'' Chapman said. ''But these snook are capable of attaining a larger size than the largemouth bass and can catch even larger specimens of tilapia and shad.''